


the art of creation

by Tuometar



Series: My midam week 2020 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: A bit strange slice of life fic, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), Other, my beta described this as, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tuometar/pseuds/Tuometar
Summary: The Archangel Michael paints for the first time.For midam week 2020 prompt: "Firsts"
Relationships: Michael & Adam Milligan, Michael/Adam Milligan
Series: My midam week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941967
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	the art of creation

**Author's Note:**

> I am late but I am here! Happy midam week everyone!
> 
> Thank you Anna for beta reading, we both know this thing really needed that.
> 
> I had a lot of ideas for this prompt varying between nonsense and crack, please enjoy the nonsense I went with.

Michael knows what he is. He is Heaven’s Warrior, his Father’s soldier, The Commander, The Prince, the Most Loyal, the one who didn’t abandon his family, the one who stayed constant and faithful to his Father’s Will. Michael is what his Father made him. His Father needed a strategist and a soldier, so he was one. His skills gave him what he needed to help his Father defeat the Darkness, they gave him what he needed to fight his brother, the Traitor. He was a warrior with millions of years of experience, and here he was adapting all his Father had given him to win card games against a human. 

When he laid down yet another winning card, Michael felt glad that he had chosen to spare the soul of his vessel, that he had chosen to create a false reality from Adam’s memories instead of letting him face the Cage and Hell as they were. The human certainly wouldn’t be teaching Michael card games to pass the time if that had been the case, he would have been driven mad long ago.

Visiting Adam in these memories was strange, the limitations of human senses felt suffocating. He remembered once how his vessel had gotten an eyelash into his eye, the irritation was the same, the innate feeling that there was something out of place and now Michael had to do his best not to pick on it or the entire reality would crumble. He wasn’t in a vessel now, in here he was just a part of himself projecting into something Adam’s mind could comprehend. And the haze also had its perks, Adam’s memories were all filled with his feelings and emotions, Adam’s feelings about his home, his safe place, help to dull some of the sharpest edges of Hell, even if it was temporary. 

“You know what?” Adam said with a huff as he put down his own cards rather sharply. Michael could see irritation radiating off his soul, but he didn’t look further, one of their earliest agreements was that Michael wouldn’t read Adam’s mind. Michael couldn’t help seeing the large mood changes through his soul but that was it. It made things needlessly complicated, but Adam had a lot of needlessly complicated rules, Michael was just bored enough to indulge most of them. It was endearing in its way, it reminded him of the way fledglings with their new wings thought the universe was at their mercy just because they had a few feathers to break their fall. 

“I’m done playing games with you, we’re doing something else,” Adam continued with and marched to an illusion of a cabinet in the “living room” of the “house”, Michael could see the “things” forming inside the cabinet as Adam thought of them. 

“Why?” Michael asked. He was actually having a good time with the card games, one of Adam’s better ideas in his opinion. 

“I’m done getting my ass handed to me for the day so we’re doing something else,” Adam said as he pulled a box out of the cabinet and showed it to him. Michael focused on the piece of memory. Adam didn’t have a clear recollection of the picture on the box, but he did remember the purple base color and luckily the font of the letters. It was a painting kit. 

“No winners, no losers, just killing time,” Adam explained as he marched to the kitchen table and began pulling things out of the box. 

“You paint?” Michael asked as he followed Adam to the table and watched him set up two working stations. and a lot of brushes and paint tubes between them. 

“No, my mom-” Adam’s soul flashed brightly with hurt, as it often did when it came to Kate Milligan, “my mom used to paint, not anything fancy, but it was a hobby she took up when she had time.” Adam twirled one of the paintbrushes between his fingers. “I’m no van Gogh,” he continued. “So sit down let’s do this.”

Adam walked to the kitchen filling two cups of water, then he sat down on one of the working stations and started unscrewing a tube of paint. Michael took his place on the other and focused himself on the memory even more trying to see it as Adam did. Painting was a visual medium he couldn’t get too hung up on the layers of memory they were twisted in. 

Michael took some paint tubes and squeezed color out of them. Adam instructed him on what color made what when mixed. He started with the primary colors red, blue, and yellow. Michael looked down at the blank paper. He looked over at Adam who had already made a mark on his paper and was holding his brush with purpose. Adam turned to look at him and then over at the blank paper in front of him. 

“Have you ever painted before?” he asked when Michael didn’t break the silence. 

“No,” Michael said truthfully. This would just be one more human thing Adam would show him. Michael was beginning to have a lot of those. 

Adam’s lips quirked up. “Okay, no pressure here, this is just for fun.” 

Michael made his face frown, a human sign of confusion, those were not clear instructions. 

“Just dip your brush in the water, and then pick a color.” Adam was looking at him expectantly so Michael picked up a brush and did as he was told, dipping his brush in the blot of blue memory haze next to his paper. And then he stilled. “What should I paint?” he asked.

Adam lifted his shoulders and set them down again. “Whatever you like, people paint a lot of stuff, flowers, animals, landscapes, other people, it’s all fair game.”

Michael thought over Adam’s vague options. Perhaps he could do a landscape. He considered for a moment. There was a particular black hole in a galaxy not too far from Earth that Michael found fascinating, but as he had never seen it with a vessel, it was hard to say what it would look like to human eyes, and it was really the 7th dimension that made the view worth it. Maybe he should stick to the memories he had had in a human vessel. 

Michael thought over his visits to Earth. Maybe that one sunset reflected on the surface of the Nile? Michael could easily notice Adam still paying attention to his unmoving hand. Nile it was. Michael recalled the memory, the way the fading daylight had set the water surface into a golden glow. It was a good enough landscape. Michael broke the image into small blocks of color and went to work. The color selection was not ideal and he couldn’t quite get the soft haze the sun had thrown in the air correctly, but overall Michael was satisfied. He also saw the point of painting. It was a task, something to focus on. Though being so visually focused into a human’s memory haze was not that pleasant. 

Adam had started to hum to himself as they painted. It was very like him. Michael had often observed that humans had a hard time being quiet, being still. They always needed to be doing something, tapping their foot, shifting, humming, talking, always something. Even Adam’s soul as tightly as it was shielded by Michael, was always trying to move. At first, Michael had found this really irritating, he had missed other angels, the way they could simply _be_ , but nowadays Michael was surprised to notice how much it had grown on him. There was enough stillness in Hell, in the Cage. The lengthening forever he was sharing with his brother now that they had stopped waging war, was always the same. So it was almost nice, the way Adam was a constant change. 

Michael let these thoughts slip away, and stopped his mechanical work when Adam fell abruptly silent. Michael turned to look at him. Adam’s emotions were not extreme enough to read of his soul, but he looked dissatisfied as he was looking at Michael’s painting. Adam’s brush had stopped inches from his paper. 

“What is it, kid?” Michael asked. He thought he was doing this correctly. It was hard to evaluate how much Adam’s memory affected the visuals, but as far Michael could judge he was doing a decent job copying the human memory he had. 

Adam rolled his eyes. “Of course you are like some freaking DaVinci,” he muttered. Michael could feel the irritation in his words. 

“DaVinci is… bad?” Michael was once again left to decipher all the impossibilities of human communication. 

Adam let out a laugh and his soul flared very quickly in amusement. “No he’s good and what you have painted, it looks very beautiful, Michael. It’s a good thing I didn’t do a landscape because we definitely would have had a winner and a loser.” Adam shook his head. 

Michael lifted his shoulders and let them drop, a sign of indifference, of hesitation, he was not one to judge human standards of beauty. 

“What is yours then?” Michael asked, looking at Adam’s creation. He had been wondering at it for a while. It wasn’t something he could place on Earth. To him, Adam’s hurried lines looked a bit like a still from flying close to Jupiter, but he highly doubted that had been what Adam was going for. 

“Oh nothing, it’s abstract,” Adam said lifting and dropping his shoulders again. 

“Abstract?” Michael didn’t know what that was. 

“It means it doesn’t look like anything, it’s just shapes and colors and…” Adam gestured with his hand vaguely. It was not helpful. 

“How do you do it then, if there is nothing to aim for?” Michael asked. 

“Well, I’m sure there are people who do know what they’re aiming for, but for mom, this was always just stress relief so she did what felt good, at the moment, picked some nice colors and painted something that felt fun.” Adam’s smile faltered and Michael could see the familiar flare of pain mixed with happiness. It was a strange thing to witness 

“I see,” he said after a moment. The idea of abstract art felt alien, Michael could see the point of copying things in the world, his Father’s creation was to be admired after all, but to just make something that had never existed before or would exist after? So very human. 

“You should try it,” Adam suddenly prompted. 

“Try what?” Michael asked, he was already trying painting. 

“Abstract painting, it’s fun and relaxing.” Adam was smiling again. 

Michael highly doubted that. “I wouldn’t know how to start,” he chose to emphasize his words with the shake of his head. 

“That’s alright, I’ll help you,” Adam said already moving Michael’s landscape to the side. 

He was given a new blank paper. Michael was at a loss once more. 

“Just pick a color, don’t think about it” Adam instructed. 

Michael dabbed his brush into a dark blue because it was what he had already been using. 

Adam nodded at him. “Now just make a mark on the paper,” he continued. 

Michael’s arm hovered over the paper. That had not been clear at all. Was he supposed to dab, or stroke or twist, what kind of mark and how big should it be?

The moment stretched, Michael didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Suddenly he felt Adam’s memory form press its hand to what Adam saw as Michael’s wrist. Michael relaxed a bit as Adam guided his hand down, but he pulled away as soon as the brush touched the paper. Michael pulled the brush up, there were light blue dots in the middle of the paper now. 

“Just do that again, I know a blank canvas can be daunting,” Adam said. 

Michael pushed his brush down a second time. Now there were two blue marks in the middle of the paper. Adam simply nodded and turned back to his own painting, humming once again. 

Michael stared at the blobs next to each other on the paper. They didn’t really exist but at the same time, they did. They were now a picture in Adam’s mind because Michael had _made_ them. 

“Now you have painted abstractly,” Adam declared, smiling at him. 

Michael was still looking at the two blobs he had made, he had _Created._

**Author's Note:**

> Was this midam or was this just some weird rambling about Michael?¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Michael's pov sure was difficult, I hope you guys found this interesting! I know it is short, and not very polished. If anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear them anyway :)
> 
> Here is my [tumblr](https://tuometarr.tumblr.com) for those interested.


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